


Execution

by Tarlan



Category: Traders (TV 1995)
Genre: Angst, Drama, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-30
Updated: 2011-05-30
Packaged: 2017-10-19 22:17:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/205820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tarlan/pseuds/Tarlan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack fakes his death after the failed execution attempt, but cannot forget someone he left behind in his old life--Grant.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Execution

**Author's Note:**

> Written for smallfandomfest Fest09 and mmom 2011 Day 30

Prison had given him one skill that he used to good effect now. He played dead, hoping that his _killer_ would leave quickly, before Jack bled to death on the deck of his boat. He heard her footsteps receding along the wooden dock and carefully drew his cellphone from his pocket, calling up the one other friend/associate he had made since arriving here--a biologist and veterinarian surgeon whom Jack had given financial support to open an extension for his research. He whispered into the phone as soon as Sam answered.

"Sam. Need you at my boat. Now. Bring your kit."

He broke off the call while Sam demanded to know what had happened, aware that Sam would assume Jack had found some animal that needed Sam's surgeon skills. By now Jack could hear the familiar rumble of a car pulling away, and knew he could move. He dragged himself along the deck and grabbed the sweatshirt that he had left hanging half off the bench hours earlier, pressing it hard against the gunshot wound. He felt his vision blurring, blacking out around the edges, and fought to stay awake. He couldn't afford for Sam to panic and call for paramedics for Egide Obélisque would simply send another assassin if the learned he had survived. If he wanted to live then he had to go even further underground...or he had to blow the whole show wide open.

As for the money, he was not stupid and had siphoned off the interest into other offshore accounts where even Grant would have difficulty tracing it. He gasped in pain, preferring to pretend it was from the bullet wound rather than from missing Grant Jansky but, hell, if there ever was a time to jump off the denial wagon then this was it. If Sam couldn't stop the bleeding then Jack knew he would be dead before Sam could get him to a hospital, so while he waited for Sam, he let his thoughts escape from the rigid compartment that he had slammed them into several years earlier.

Grant.

The guy was unique, so different from anybody Jack had known before; funny, smart, gentle, excitable, loyal and yet so vulnerable. He had a spent a few months sharing a house with Grant and Donald after losing everything in a bad deal, and Grant had made that offer out of friendship rather than pity. Friendship...and Jack had repaid him by getting too involved in a woman that he knew Grant loved before deserting him soon after they lost Ann to the car bomb set by Jean Paul Brunet and his mercenary organization, Egide Obélisque. Yet through it all, Grant had remained loyal and steadfast.

Some friend he had turned out to be, he thought bitterly as he recalled how he had abandoned Grant.

He thought of Ann, of the betrayals and her attempts to make up for her character flaws. She had been the one to ruin him financially, unable to put him before a profit, whereas Grant had offered every cent he owned to help pull Jack out of a mire of his own making. Grant had put him before money. When he looked back on their relationship, he knew it hadn't even been love between them, just a confused sense of need that had grown harder when Grant had shown his interest in Ann.

The realization struck him harder than any bullet.

His interest in Ann had been in response to Grant's interest. He had known from the start what she was capable of, and how her need to prove herself in the financial world overshadowed even a shred of common decency towards those she ought to consider of as friends. Marty had disliked her from the first. He had maintained a wary relationship with her like two hungry piranha circling each other in a small pool. He had pegged her character from the start and, deep down, Jack had recognized it too. She would have eaten Grant alive and left only his stripped bones behind. He recognized with dismay that his interest in her had come out of a masochistic duty he felt towards protecting Grant.

More memories flooded in. When she had lain sick in the hospital after the overdose, he had avoided her. Yet when Grant was sick he had rushed out of his office, abandoning meetings and lucrative deals.

He had put Grant before making money.

Jack heard a car engine and listened for footsteps, a little afraid that it would not be Sam but someone wanting to check that the job of killing him had been done properly.

"Jack?"

"Sam!" Jack was surprised at how weak his voice had become but Sam heard him and was on his knees before him.

"Oh God, Jack! You need a hospital!" He fumbled for his cellphone but Jack grabbed his arm.

"No. If they find out I'm alive they will finish the job."

"What do you expect me to do?"

"You said it yourself...humans are animals too."

"Jack. I can't--"

"You have to." Jack stared hard into Sam's worried eyes. "Please."

Whatever he saw in Jack's face must have been enough for he nodded and helped Jack down the stairs into the living space below deck. He saw Sam take out medication--properly pain relief or even anesthetic--and gripped his arm again.

"Paper and pen."

"What?"

"If it all goes wrong. Want to resolve you of any--"

"No piece of paper will do that. You'd be dead before I could get you to a hospital or before the paramedics could arrive. I don't have a lot of choice."

Jack squeezed the arm beneath his hand. "A message then. Tell Grant...Tell him I was an idiot not to choose him."

"You can tell him yourself."

The world went dark as Sam injected something into his arm, and when Jack opened his eyes again he was resting in a strange cabin with daylight filtering through the curtain covering the porthole. He could hear movement in the galley beyond and debated on whether to call out. Sam appeared at the threshold before he could come to a decision.

"About time you woke up."

"How long?"

"Two days."

"Two days?" He felt the movement of water under the boat. "Where are we?"

"Well, if what you were saying was true then I didn't think it was wise to hang around on your boat just in case those people decided to go investigate when no one reported finding a dead body. I was already heading out on a week-long research trip so I brought you here." Sam smiled. "In fact, if your call had come an hour later, you'd have missed me."

Three days later, Sam's boat pulled into a small harbor and though he was reluctant to let Jack go off alone, Jack had convinced him that it would be okay. As long as there was a bank in the small town--which was very likely--then Jack would be able to access one of his bolt-hole accounts. Grateful that he had set up Sam with funds well in advance of the past week's events, they exchanged good wishes and Jack walked away.

***

**Two Years Later:**

Once he had broken through the denial, Jack found the memories of Grant hard to shake. He recalled the strangest things--the way Grant smiled crookedly when he was bashful, the light shining in those blue eyes when someone had done something nice for him or when he had made a discovery. Yet what made it harder to bear was other, almost forgotten memories of lying in his bed in Grant's house and hearing through the thin walls the soft whimpers and moans as Grant pleasured himself. His mind had started to supply images to match those sounds, gleaned from all the expressions he had seen cross Grant's face. He could imagine the intensity in his eyes and the dexterity of his hands from watching Grant working hard at a computer. He could imagine Grant's nimble fingers wrapped around his cock, with that analytical mind working out the right pressure and the exact combination of slide and caress needed to attain maximum pleasure. Jack imagined the intensity focused upon another person--upon him--and sometimes he awoke from wet dreams where Grant had broken him with mind-blowing orgasms, with the evidence of that dream cooling stickily on his bed sheets.

In his dreams he remembered the musky scent of male sex in Grant's room. Sometimes he was simply the observer in those dreams, watching as Grant brought himself to release, as if he had transported himself from his bed next door to the small chair set in the corner of Grant's room. Those dreams made him ache the hardest because he no longer wanted to sit on the sidelines and watch. He wanted to touch and hold.

With all the money he had squirreled away before the main account was drained by Sally--oh yeah, he had figured that one out fast enough--it hadn't taken much effort to keep a watch on Grant. Jack had photos and video feeds taken by private detectives without Grant's knowledge, finding it impossible to cut off all ties to his former life.--or at least to sever that one last tie that bound him to Grant.

When Grant had his psychotic breakdown, Jack could no longer hide away within his new life. He should not have been surprised at how easy it was to bring Grant all the way to an private island in a group off the coast of Ecuador with just a single phone call. It was if Grant had been waiting for him, as if Grant needed him. But perhaps, Grant had always needed him, and Jack knew now that he needed Grant in turn.

When the small, privately chartered sea plane landed, Jack waiting close to the shore as it maneuvered towards the small dock. He saw a single figure step off the plane, fumbling with several suitcases, recognizing the slightly hunched shoulders. Grant waved goodbye as the plane headed back out for a sea take-off and then waited at the end of the dock, looking lost and alone as he watched the plane leave. It cut Jack's heart in two, so he strode towards the lonely figure.

"Grant?"

Grant whipped around and his eyes went huge like a child presented with the greatest toy ever. Seconds later, Jack had an armful of Grant, who was wrapped tightly around him. Instead of pulling away as he used to back at Gardner-Ross, embarrassed by the show of affection, Jack hugged him back harder, and when Grant turned his face to look at him, Jack claimed his mouth in a kiss.

They were still kissing and touching hours later, with naked bodies wrapped firmly around each other in Jack's wide bed.

END


End file.
